This film has a realistic, dramatic depiction of show
business and backstage life of Broadway and the New York theater. Thematically,
it provides an insightful diatribe against crafty, aspiring, glib, autonomous
female thespians who seek success and ambition at any cost without regard
to scruples or feelings. With approaching age, vain Broadway mega-star
actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis) seeks the flattering attention of
aspiring, captivating actress Miss Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter).

When
Margo's fiancee-to-be, theatrical director Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill),
a show business veteran and one of Margo's inner circle, turns his
attention toward Eve, her sympathy for Eve slowly turns into alienation
and hostility. Paranoid and suspicious, Margo smells "disaster in the air" before a belated
birthday (and welcome home from Hollywood) party for Bill. She is clearly
plagued by jealousy, "age obsession" and "paranoiac insecurity" and she
turns acerbic toward Eve - "she's a girl with so many interests."

Margo
begins to get roaring drunk and feels "Macbethish" in mood - she snidely
calls Eve "the Kid" and "Junior," feeling menaced by the deceptive young
actress. At the height of her bitchery, she warns some of the birthday
party guests about what to expect in the film's most famous line - after
finishing another martini, her slur is delivered as a lip-sneering, nasty
admonition: "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night."

Billy Wilder's dark, classic comedy/drama is perhaps the
most acclaimed, "behind the scenes" film about Hollywood and its legacies.
Legendary silent film star Gloria Swanson "autobiographically" portrays
a deluded actress whose career declined with the coming of the talkies
- she resolutely refuses to accept her forgotten status. In a flashback,
wealthy, aging, reclusive Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), Paramount's
greatest film star during the silent era (noted for saying "I am
big. It's the pictures that got small"), murders her struggling,
down-and-out depressed hack screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden).

In the film's memorable conclusion, she is lured from her mansion in Beverly
Hills to go quietly downstairs to a waiting car through a group of assembled
reporters and cameramen - only by being made to think she is returning
to the screen and shooting a scene for famous movie director Cecil B.
De Mille. Her bald-headed butler Max von Mayerling (Erich von Stroheim)
prepares the newsreel cameramen and also asks if the lights are ready.
Then looking up toward the balcony where Norma will enter the scene, he
shouts: "Quiet everybody!...Lights!"

Max must explain the scene to a confused
Norma: "This is the staircase of the palace." Norma readies herself: "Oh
yes, yes...down below, they're waiting for the princess. I'm ready." Sweeping
her gown around with one hand, she begins to descend the staircase for
her final close-up. Max shouts more directions: "Cameras! Action!" The
dead screenwriter narrates in voice-over, introducing her exit down the
marble staircase in her decaying Hollywood mansion to the whir of cameras:

"So they were turning, after all - those cameras. Life, which can be strangely
merciful, had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to
so desperately had enfolded her."

The film queen descends the marble staircase
believing she is playing Salome in the most important scene of her career.
At the bottom of the stairs, she has become so overjoyed that she has
to have a word for the crew:

"I can't go on with the scene. I'm too happy!
Mr. De Mille, do you mind if I say a few words? Thank you. I just want
to tell you all how happy I am to be back in the studio making a picture
again! You don't know how much I've missed all of you. And I promise you,
I'll never desert you again because after Salome we'll make another
picture and another picture! You see, this is my life. It always will
be! There's nothing else - just us - and the cameras - and those wonderful
people out there in the dark. All right, Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for
my close-up."

Then, Norma walks past the newsreel cameras and directly
toward the offscreen cameras filming the scene. As one camera closes
in on her face, her image goes into a blurry soft-focus, as Norma slips
transcendently backward in time to her glory days, a time of illusion.

George Stevens' romantic drama is a film adaptation of
Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy - it emphasizes the
wide gap between the frivolous rich and the downtrodden poor and how fate
heavy-handedly controls life. A poor, uneducated, quiet, but ambitious
and aspiring young man, George Eastman (Montgomery Clift), although considered
a bit of an embarrassment to his wealthy, status-conscious aunt and uncle,
he falls in love with his cousin, the Eastman's daughter Angela Vickers
(Elizabeth Taylor). She is attracted by his boyish, shy, and handsome
appearance, and he is attracted by the parties, dances, cars, clothes,
upper-class lifestyle, and he begins to fall madly in love with the beautiful
and wealthy young woman.

In one of the greatest, most romantic performances
ever filmed, in an extended scene of their budding romance, the film
captures the sensuous and electrifying romantic interplay between them
at the dance. Dancing with her, he appears sullen and Angela misinterprets
his mood. She thinks that he seems strange, deep, reserved, and far
away - holding something back. He doesn't want to spoil their nice
evening by telling her that he has impregnated a co-worker, so he confesses
his love to Angela, a love of an ideal woman which has now been discovered
in her: "I love
you. I've loved you since the first moment I saw you. I guess maybe I've
loved you before I saw you."

In a sensuous scene, Angela then begins to
confess her love too, but then becomes totally self-conscious, looking
around anxiously and hesitantly: "You're the fellow who wondered why I
invited you here tonight. Well, I'll tell you why. I love...Are they watching
us?" She pulls him out to the balcony terrace for privacy and replies
reticently to his confession: "I love you too. It scares me. But it is
a wonderful feeling."

In these powerful erotic moments, their enormous,
extreme closeups fill the screen as they reveal innermost emotions and
inflamed passions. Angela tells him she can see him all summer by the
lake on the weekends, when he isn't working: "We'll have such wonderful
times together, just the two of us." George is on cloud nine: "I'm the
happiest person in the world." Angela replies: "The second happiest."
However, George is filled with guilt and repression: "Oh, Angela, if I
could only tell you how much I love you, if I could only tell you all."
She comforts him with an intimate reply while pulling him closer to her:
"Tell mama, tell mama all." They embrace and kiss passionately, caught
up in something over which they have no control.

Elia Kazan's film challenged the Production Code's censors
with its bold adult drama and sexual subjects (rape, domestic violence,
homosexuality, and female promiscuity or nymphomania) - it is the
story of the pathetic mental and emotional demise of a determined,
yet fragile, repressed and delicate Southern lady Blanche DuBois (Vivien
Leigh) born to a once-wealthy family of Mississippi planters. Her
downfall in the squalid, two-room French Quarter apartment of her
married sister Stella Kowalski (Kim Hunter) and animalistic husband
Stanley (Marlon Brando) is at the hands of savage, brutal forces in
modern society.

Marlon Brando, in his second screen appearance and
recreating his Broadway role, delivers an overpowering, memorable
performance. During a drunken, losing poker hand, Stanley becomes
uncontrollably beserk, charges after his wife and assaults her with
a few blows, causing a fight to break out to control his "lunacy." His
poker buddies hold him under a cold shower to sober him up. Dripping
wet with water, Stanley realizes he has struck and abused Stella,
and feeling repentant, he searches for her.

Stella and Blanche have
sought protective refuge in an upstairs apartment. Animalistic and
virile in a wet, torn T-shirt, he bellows repeatedly for Stella from
the street in front of their building, begging for her return: "Hey
Stell - Lahhhhh!"

This scene is one of the most regularly-chosen
clips played in film excerpts from cinematic history. With the low
moan of a clarinet, Stella finally responds to her contradictory impulses
- her anger melts into forgiveness, her fear into desire. She leaves
the shelter of the upstairs apartment and stands staring down at him
from the upper landing. Then, she surrenders herself to him - she
slowly descends the spiraling stairs to him and comes down to his
level. He drops to his knees, crying. She sympathizes with him as
he presses his face to her pregnant belly, and they embrace and kiss.
Stanley begs: "Don't ever leave me, baby,"
and then literally sweeps her off her feet - he carries her into their
dark apartment for a night of passion.

One of the best and most beautifully-crafted westerns
of all time portrays the lone figure of Marshal Kane (Gary Cooper) left
to face four vengeful gunslingers who have arrived by train in the town
of Hadleyville. In a powerful, memorable montage of cross-cut images,
a few minutes before twelve noon, as tension, fear, and frustration register
on Kane's face, he writes his last will and testament in his office. The
silence is punctuated by the pendulum of his office's clock and the noon
train's whistle. Kane places his will in a sealed envelope, writing on
the outside: "To be opened in the event of my death."

Before the exciting
finale, he walks out onto the deserted main street and surveys its emptiness,
resolute and resigned to his duty. His blonde, newlywed Quaker wife
(Grace Kelly) and his ex-mistress - a half-Mexican saloon owner Helen
Ramirez (Katy Jurado) ride past in an open buckboard wagon bound for
the train station to leave town. The camera pulls back as he stands
there helpless and immobile and watches them pass. At the depot, outlaw
Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), whom Kane helped send to prison years
earlier, arrives on the noon train. Helen notices that Frank joins
the other three gunmen at the station.

A close-up of Kane's face shows
sweat, exhaustion, and fear. A long, upward-moving crane shot pulls
back, revealing his forsakenness amidst the storefronts and rooftops
of the small community. His tiny figure slowly strides down the middle
of the dirt street toward a gripping shootout sequence with the four
killers. All alone, he has been utterly betrayed - no one is there
to come to his aid: the Judge, his immature deputy, and all his friends
and townspeople have turned their backs on him. Standing alone, Kane
has decided that he must fight for his principles against all odds
- a challenge he must meet even if it means his own death.

The joyous title song sequence from this musical has become
movie legend as the most famous dance number in American film - and it
is Gene Kelly's finest solo performance ever. In a classic, heart-lifting,
enchanting dance scene during a cloudburst, Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly)
does a glorious performance of the title song "Singin' In the Rain," a
spontaneous expression of his euphoric mood and happiness over his new-found
love for Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds).

He strolls down the empty two blocks of street in the
rain passing shop windows (including a Pharmacy/Drug Store with a
'Smoke Mahout' window display, the Richard Carlane Music Studio, the
LaValle Millinery Shop, the 'First Editions' Book Store, and Mount
Hollywood Art School). At first, he keeps his umbrella open above
him to keep dry, but after a few short steps, he shrugs and closes
it (and either lays it on his shoulder, swings it, keeps it to his
side, or imaginatively incorporates it into the number).

He skips on the sidewalk, climbs on and swings around
a lamppost, and saunters and sloshes along. Then, he jumps, and tap-dances
through the puddles - becoming more and more child-like. He lets a
drainpipe of rainwater drain on his upturned face, kicks up water,
splashes, cavorts, and stamps around with sheer delight. After twirling
on the cobble-stoned street, he balances on the street curb like a
tightrope walker. When a mystified and vaguely hostile policeman finally
walks over to find out what he is doing jumping up and down in deep
puddles, and looks at him suspiciously, he reacts guiltily toward
the authority figure. [When the camera cuts from one view to another,
Kelly's two hands on the umbrella change to only his right hand on
the umbrella.] He slows down, turns, and answers simply: "I'm
dancin' and singin' in the rain." He closes his
umbrella, grins boldly, walks off, hands his umbrella off to a needy
passerby, and waves back toward the policeman from afar.

The film noirish, big-city crime classic and violent
melodrama - Fritz Lang's film contains one of the most celebrated but
disturbing scenes ever filmed - although the audience never sees it on
camera. The film's heroine Debby Marsh (Gloria Grahame) is the beautiful
moll and kept-woman of sadistic, cold-blooded Vince Stone (Lee Marvin),
crime boss Mike Lagana's (Alexander Scourby) chief henchman.

In the film's
most vivid and frightening scene, Stone, in a rage, suspecting that she
has lied to him about her whereabouts, maybe "played footsie when my back
was turned," or has given out information to vengeful ex-cop Dave Bannion
(Glenn Ford), the dressed-up punk disfigures one side of her pretty face
by flinging a pot of scalding hot coffee on her. He reaches for the bubbling
Pyrex pot and as the camera remains stationary on the burner, the soundtrack
records the splash and screams as her face is scarred and burned.

A victim
of brutal violence, she rushes into the other room crying: "My face! My
face!"

One image has forever captured the image of an emotionally-dangerous,
forbidden and career-threatening relationship - the one of two lovers
being covered by rushing waves in the moonlight as they lie on an
Hawaiian beach. Career soldier First Sergeant Milton Warden (Burt
Lancaster) and the base captain's bored housewife Karen Holmes (Deborah
Kerr) clandestinely meet at a park bench at Kuhio Beach Park away
from Schofield Barracks, both of them with bathing suits under their
clothing.

Later during their rendezvous on a sandy Oahu beach,
the waves crash in toward them in the film's most memorable, famous
and shockingly torrid (for its day) love-making scene. Karen removes
her outer clothing, and looks provocatively at the Sergeant as he strips
down to his shorts.

For a moonlight swim, she runs first into the
water, encouraging him to join her. At the edge of the Hawaiian beach
surf, the waves churn up white caps and breakers. The water rolls
up the beach and races toward Karen and Warden, lying together. Their
bodies are tightly locked and intertwined in an embrace as they kiss
each other and the waves pour over them. She rises, prances up the
sand, and collapses onto their blanket.

The echoing finale, as Shane rides off into the bluish
distance of the empty Wyoming landscape after a poignant goodbye and farewell
is an unforgettable sequence.

Young Joey (Brandon de Wilde) is the only
one to bid Shane, his mythical idolized hero, farewell. As gunfighter
Shane starts to leave, he indicates to Joey that he will never return.
Tears well up in Joey's eyes and Shane whispers quietly: "Bye, little
Joe." The fringe-jacketed, lonely hero then rides off into the twilight
meadow toward the distant hills framed against the sky and mountains,
growing smaller and smaller in the distance. Young, anguished, and heartbroken
Joey sadly calls out to his hero/idol in one of filmdom's most famous
and haunting endings, as tears streak down his face:

[Another
most memorable scene: The gunning-down of innocent victim "Stonewall"
Frank Torrey (Elisha Cook, Jr.) on a dark, black storm-clouded day by
mean, murderous, merciless, hired gunman Wilson (Jack Palance). He is
shot down on the primitive, muddy main street of the frontier town - violently
thrown backwards and slamming into the thick black mud.]

Charley advises Terry to keep his mouth shut and not
testify about what he knows about the corrupt union bosses. He becomes
exasperated with his stubborn brother's unwillingness to immediately
comply. Charley suggests that if they get to their destination, 437
River Street, and Terry hasn't made up his mind, there may be serious
consequences. Terry is stunned by his brother's words. Suddenly, Charley
pulls a gun, threatening him to accept an easy dock job in exchange
for keeping quiet. Surprised, Terry pushes the gun away, gently guiding
it down: "Charley
... Charley ... Oh Charley. Wow."

Embittered, Terry faces up to the fact
that he has made nothing of his life, blaming his brother instead of
his ex boxing manager. Terry is reminded of how he was given "a one-way ticket
to Palookaville" in his boxing days when he knew he had a
winner inside himself, but was told to lose. At one point in his life,
he could have risen about his low-life condition through his skill as
a prizefighter. He poignantly looks back to the night of the fight when
he lost all his sense of personal worth and integrity. He realizes that
his brother betrayed him and sold him out. He continues his sad, pitiable
lament, and blames his brother for compromising and sacrificing his boxing
career and his life, preventing him from becoming a contender for the
title:

"You was
my brother, Charley. You should've looked out for me a little bit. You
should've taken care of me - just a little bit - so I wouldn't have to
take them dives for the short-end money...You don't understand! I could've
had class. I could've been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead
of a bum, which is what I am. Let's face it (pause) ...... It was you,
Charley."

One of the greatest American films of all time is Charles
Laughton's sole directorial effort, a truly compelling and terrifying
classic masterpiece thriller filled with an array of startling images.
A sinister, crazed, psychopathic, black-cloaked and hatted 'Preacher'
Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), one of the 'false prophets' of the 30s
presents a chilling, perversely evil and memorable monologue to the Lord
in the film's opening.

He glances heavenward and delivers an insane prayer,
revealing that he is a serial killer who receives divine inspirations
to first marry, and then murder and rob women, usually rich lonely
widows who do not see the evil in him. His left hand is tattooed with
the letters
"H - A - T - E" on his four fingers, and his right hand's knuckles with
the letters "L - O - V - E" - which he explains in a memorable hand-wrestling
scene.

When a criminal's execution takes the secret of the location
of stolen money to his death, the smooth-talking Preacher marries his
widow Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) and then knifes her to death in
a frightening yet subdued scene in their A-frame bedroom. The grisly
sight of her corpse is a nightmarish, hypnotically-eerie image. It
dissolves into view - water reeds flow in the underwater current with
Willa's corpse strapped to the front seat of her model T submerged
in the river. Her long hair is tangled with the river reeds and her
throat is slashed.

[In a classic confrontational scene between the phony,
blaspheming 'false prophet' and a true, pure and strong Bible-fearing
farm woman - a matriarchal widow named Mrs. Rachel Cooper (Lillian
Gish), Powell lurks outside the farm house, singing his rendition
of a gospel hymn ("Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" with
the words: "Leaning, leaning..."
In silhouette, Rachel appears like the portrait of Whistler's Mother,
sitting in a rocking chair on her screened-in porch with the shotgun
across her lap. Rachel counters his song, defiantly and harmoniously
singing the authentic version of the Protestant religious hymn with
a spiritual reference to Jesus: "Lean on Jesus, lean on Jesus," filling
in the words that he has chosen to leave out in a simultaneous duet.]

A collection of the 100 most famous, unforgettable or
memorable images, scenes, sequences or performances in films of the
20th century.